Matt: This is getting a bit off-topic, but I can give you my two-cents.

The user interest is there already. HL2 showed that plenty of people love physics in games and would be willing to upgrade their hardware to get the best performance. And developers are interested as well. The PC version of GRAW, City of Heroes, and many up-coming games will include PhysX enhanced versions.

API standard? The great thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from. If Ageia works as advertised and it wasn't so pricey, it would be a huge hit among developers. I'm guessing it is only a matter of time before Microsoft buys Ageia (or makes something like it) and DirectPhysics becomes the standard for games.

Installed base? This is the Catch-22 of all new technology. If Ageia gets ATI and/or nVidia to put PhysX on high-end graphic cards, this will take care of itself. In the meantime, PhysX works without hardware as well.

I'm not saying that PhysX is the future, it's going to take a lot of work and luck for them even to survive, but I don't think their idea is doomed.

But I think we are saying the same thing. PhysX is most likely going to succeed as part of the MoBo or video card.

ok sorry for going off-topic

While what you say makes sense, I still dont think the future of games/simulations is a specialized hardware for everything.

I dont see why CPU-based physics isnt good enough for the future, as it's pretty darn good in games like Half-life 2, Oblivion, etc. As CPUs get faster, won't physics models improve as well? Is the answer to every limitation going to be new specialized hardware hardware?

what about the "rainFX" chip, or the "realGrass" chip, or whatever? You could conceivably build chips for anything like this..making the developers life a pure hell, and the users life just an excersize in futility trying to keep up.

Oh well, I'm not against physics acceleration per se, but I do think it has to be part of the cpu or motherbpoard/video card, rather than a stand alone. ..

the physics hardware isn't that specialized. it's a vector processor and quite similar to a modern gpu. i think ati and nvidia won't need anything from ageia since they already have everything needed and their chips even are much faster.

soon there also will be quad core cpus with doubled sse performance (sse is for vector processing too).

i don't think a separate physics card which can't be used for anything else makes sense.

In my opinion these addon pci-cards are at the moments only for
the real geeks, the pioneers.
When the critc mass is reached, these chips will be onboard,
as this was the same case with SCSI addons and things like that.
With the cards I have seen till yet, this should not be no problem,
just like another southbridge.

old_bill

but this chip isn't that special. shader pipelines (especially shader model > 3) can do the same. there is no reason to add this physics chip anywhere. the reviews and sales so far also have been very poor.

ati and nvidia will just have to add more and more shader pipelines which will happen anyway (the top cards already have around 48). then a bunch of them always can be used for physics.

I'm not familar with the techniques in detail, but as far as they offer
an software device for it, this would be great.

But as always, some high-priced "toys" have to be released and tried
in public, before they will end up with an more comfortable and cheaper solution.

old_bill

I've heard that Microsoft is delevopping "Direct Physics", an implementation for the new DirectX. Bad: DX10 will be only for Vista. Plus: Maybe some engine programmers, can get easier ways for writing a great physic for their games.


mfg beegee

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GenuineMotors.de

OK, you're right Doug! Microsoft isn't delevopping DirectPhysics at the moment, but they are searching great programmers who can do this. And then it will be implemented in the next DirectX-Generation.

mfg beegee

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GenuineMotors.de

Even if Microsoft makes DirectPhysics, it will take three versions before you'd want to use it.